Repos de la nuit, Rêverie du soir, Les heures du jour, Éveil du matin. Alphonse Mucha, 1899
With this post, I'm breaking a bit of a tradition. When I choose poems for these Friday installments, I strive to find a poet I haven't featured before, and to never feature any poet more than twice. I feel this helps to keep things inventive and pushes me to search for new poems both to read and share. As a small personal rule it also serves as a check against me just dumping the collected works of Kathy Acker, Sylvia Plath, Vladimir Mayakovsy and Stephen Vincent Benet on here and going "Viola! Breaking Time!"
But W.B. Yeats has broken the mold. This poem is to perfect for today to let it go.
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.
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